Patrick Semansky/The Associated PressWorkers collect oil and debris that washed up onto the beach in Grand Isle on Saturday.

President Barack Obama said this morning that the new national commission he's appointing to probe the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill should focus on ensuring the nation has the necessary environmental and safety framework to "make sure it never happens again."

Bob Graham, a Democrat, and William Reilly, a Republican, will lead the seven-member commission to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The seven-member commission will be headed by former Florida Democratic senator and governor Bob Graham and William Reilly, a Republican who served as President George H.W. Bush's Environmental Protection Agency Administrator during the Exxon Valdez spill.

"While there are a number of ongoing investigations, including an independent review by the National Academy of Engineering, the purpose of this commission is to consider both the root cause of the disaster and offer options of what safety and environmental precautions we need to take to prevent a similar disaster from happening again," Obama said in his Saturday radio and internet address.

Obama said he soon will appoint five other commission members, including scientists, engineers and environmental advocates, to serve on the commission.

"I'm directing them to report back in six months with recommendations on how we can prevent and mitigate the impact of any future spills that result from offshore drilling," Obama said.

Several environmental groups hailed the creation of the commission.

"First, we need to know what caused the blow-out that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon, took 11 lives and left an open well to gush millions of gallons of crude oil unabated into the open sea," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Obama said it's important that both the rig operators and the federal government be held accountable for the disaster.

"First and foremost, what led to this disaster was a breakdown of responsibility on the part of BP and perhaps others, including Transocean and Halliburton," Obama said. "And we will continue to hold the relevant companies accountable not only for being forthcoming and transparent about the facts surrounding the leak, but for shutting it down, repairing the damage it does and repaying Americans who've suffered a financial loss.

Obama said he also wants to know "if the laws on our books are inadequate to prevent such oil spill, or we didn't enforce those laws."

"I want to know what worked and what didn't work in our response to the disaster, and where oversight of the oil and gas industry broke down," Obama said. "We know, for example, that a cozy relationship between oil and gas companies and agencies that regulate them has long been a source of concern."

Also this morning, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who has chaired several hearings on the oil spill, wrote to top executives at BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the major operators of the doomed deep-water rig, asking them to fund a group of independent scientists and researchers to find solutions to the ongoing crisis.

"We need to have all of our best minds on board and all hands on deck to confront this ongoing environmental catastrophe," Markey said in his latter. "Allowing independent scientists to sample our oceans and provide their own independent tests - using their own laboratories - will be critical in generating reliable and unbiased information."